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<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7123958" data-attributes="member: 12731">The problem is that then you commit yourself. You open up yourself to a chicken race, and there are only losers in a chicken race: either the DM chickens out (and the campaign dies an agonizing death) or there's effectively a TPK (and the campaign dies an agonizing death)Building Jenga towers creates stress/dread/anxiety without any such commitment.And I say this well aware I just said I dislike the kind of vague hazy &quot;the world will end unless you hurry up&quot; threats that never materialize.What you want is something more tangible than vague and hazy, without committing yourself to a specific number of days/years/encounters/mcguffins collected/guardian monsters killed.The idea is to remove player decisions from story, and focus them on game. When they don't have a pressing story reason, the point is to encourage them to press on rather than rest for no other reason than to keep the dice pool from growing. The underlying reason we want players to press on is mechanical. So the solution is to mechanically award players for deciding against resting in all those cases where they could rest, but where they could also not rest.The point is to shift the &quot;default&quot; decision away from &quot;since we have no particular reason to believe one more rest will make a difference, we'll rest now&quot; to &quot;since we have no particular reason to believe one more rest will make a difference, we'll skip resting now&quot;. Before, rest carried a small cost. Now, hopefully the baseline cost of resting is sufficiently increased you only rest when you &quot;have to&quot;, which imho is what the encounter expectation is based on already from the start.Some players already do think this way, no prodding necessary. And that's great - you don't need any of this thread!But many players don't.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 7123958, member: 12731"] The problem is that then you commit yourself. You open up yourself to a chicken race, and there are only losers in a chicken race: either the DM chickens out (and the campaign dies an agonizing death) or there's effectively a TPK (and the campaign dies an agonizing death) Building Jenga towers creates stress/dread/anxiety without any such commitment. And I say this well aware I just said I dislike the kind of vague hazy "the world will end unless you hurry up" threats that never materialize. What you want is something more tangible than vague and hazy, without committing yourself to a specific number of days/years/encounters/mcguffins collected/guardian monsters killed. The idea is to remove player decisions from story, and focus them on game. When they don't have a pressing story reason, the point is to encourage them to press on rather than rest for no other reason than to keep the dice pool from growing. The underlying reason we want players to press on is mechanical. So the solution is to [I]mechanically[/I] award players for deciding against resting in all those cases where they could rest, but where they could also not rest. The point is to shift the "default" decision away from "since we have no particular reason to believe one more rest will make a difference, we'll rest now" to "since we have no particular reason to believe one more rest will make a difference, we'll skip resting now". Before, rest carried a small cost. Now, hopefully the baseline cost of resting is sufficiently increased you only rest when you "have to", which imho is what the encounter expectation is based on already from the start. Some players already do think this way, no prodding necessary. And that's great - you don't need any of this thread! But many players don't. [/QUOTE]

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